FirstClass lets you store personal contact information, such as the email address, phone number, and street address of a friend. Contacts provide a quick way to address messages to both people who aren't registered on your server and people who are, but whom you address, say, by nickname.

We recommend that you create a conference instead of a mail list, to reduce Mailbox clutter, if all recipients would have access to your conference.

If you do have a mail list, and want to extract all the names in that mail list to plain text, select the mail list (don't open it) and choose Message > Summarize Selected.

Contacts and mail lists can be in your Contacts folder, where only you will see them, or in public contact databases, where others can see and contribute to them. You, your administrator, and other users can create contact databases and share them with other users. You can also share a contact by attaching it to a message.

When you add contacts and mail lists, they are added to your personal view of the Directory. In the case of a contact database, you must place a link to it in your Contacts folder, or copy entries from it to your Contacts folder, to see the contact database entries in your view of the Directory.

Exception

Contacts aren't added to the Directory if your administrator didn't give you access to the contact management feature. If you don't have the contact management feature, you can still create contacts purely for reference.

There are several ways you can control how you view contact information in your Contacts folder and other contact databases.

If you show the contacts in index card view, you will have immediate access to standard information, such as phone numbers, so that you can call someone without having to open their contact form. You can click this information twice to make it editable, then update it right in this view.

In index card view, your contacts are automatically color coded by category, if you assigned categories to them.

Controlling how you view contact information

FirstClass supplies several versions of the form you use to add and store contacts. For example, if you are used to an Outlook or Palm personal address form, there are FirstClass forms that have a similar layout.

Choose the form you want to use in your Contacts folder, and as the default form in any contact databases that you create, in your preferences. Choose the form you want to use for a specific contact database in that contact database's permissions.

Navigating to a particular name

To go to the first name that starts with a particular letter, or starts with a number, click the appropriate button at the right of the contact database window.

If there are two letters combined on a button, you can go to the first name that starts with the second letter by clicking the button twice.

Opening contacts' web pages

Only applicable if you use a contact form that includes website fields.

If you supplied company/personal website URLs when you created a contact, you can go to the contact's web page directly from the contact form.

To do this, choose Open Link from the context menu at the field that contains the URL.

Viewing maps for contacts' addresses

If you supplied a business or personal mailing address when you created a contact, you can go to the map web page for that address directly from the contact form.

To do this, click Map.

You can change the map website that FirstClass uses in your preferences.

You can create contact databases within your Contacts folder, or another contact database, to organize contact information.

For example, you can create a contact database for all contacts involved with a special project, then move or copy entries into this contact database. You can share this contact database just as you would any other contact database.

You can import contact information from FirstClass and other applications, such as Outlook Express, or export your contacts from FirstClass.

In both cases, the transfer is done using vCard (.vcf file) or Excel (.csv file) format. vCard is a common format for transporting contact information between applications. Excel format consists of comma, tab, or semicolon delimited data.

Importing contacts using vCard format

To import vCard contact information into FirstClass:

1 Export the data from the other application as a .vcf file.

2 Log into FirstClass.

3 Choose File > Import > Import Contacts.

If you want to import to a public contact database, open the contact database first. Otherwise, the contacts are added to your Contacts folder.

4 Select the .vcf file.

To import a .vcf file that is attached to a message, select it, then choose Collaborate > Add to Contacts Folder. The contacts are added to your Contacts folder.

Importing contacts using Excel format

To import Excel contact information into FirstClass:

1 Prepare the data for importing.

Open the address book in the other application, then save the fields you want to export as a comma, tab, or semicolon delimited text file with an extension of .csv. If the other application can't save the data in this format, try importing the data into a spreadsheet program and saving it from there.

2 Log into FirstClass.

3 Choose File > Import > Import Contacts.

If you want to import to a public contact database, open the contact database first. Otherwise, the contacts are added to your Contacts folder.

4 Select the .csv file.

FirstClass displays the fields in the file, and the FirstClass fields to which they will map.

5 Change field mappings, if required, by choosing new FirstClass fields from the dropdown fields.

To import a .csv file that is attached to a message, select it, then choose Collaborate > Add to Contacts Folder. The contacts are added to your Contacts folder.

If you created the contact database in an area that others can't access, you must make users members before they can use this contact database.

Giving users access to your contact databases

You can make your contact database available to users by:

• creating the contact database in a container to which they have access

or

• making them members of your contact database.

To make a user a member of your contact database:

1 Select your contact database.

2 Choose Members from the context menu.

If the contact database Permissions form is still open, you can click Members instead.

3 Click Add Member.

Shortcut

With the members list open, you can open a list of users, such as the Directory, select users, and drag them to the members list. You can also select a plain text list of user names (one per line) and drag them.

4 Select the user and click Add.

The user is notified of this membership by email, and your contact database is added to their Contacts folder.

To see a selected member's profile, click Profile.

To remove a selected member, click Remove Member.

Tip

You can click the column headings in the members list to sort the list, just as you can in other lists. This lets you display the member names in alphabetical order.